


Where's the dreams that I've been after?

by skyfallat221b



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Needs a Hug, Mental Health Issues, Post CATWS, actually everyone does, also where clint has been, and so does Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 10:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2225286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyfallat221b/pseuds/skyfallat221b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Winter Soldier is finally captured, he refuses to speak to anyone about his past or about his experiences. That is, until Clint Barton decides that they share at least the being-someone-else's-puppet-thing and decides to do something about it. </p><p>Post CATWS, also explains where Clint has been during Phase 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where's the dreams that I've been after?

They got a memo telling them to stand with their faces up the wall when they'd bring in one of their latest captures. The only time Clint could remember they had gotten this same message, was when they had brought him in.

 It hadn't exactly been the most pleasant experience, now that he thought back to it. The fact was, that he had been brought in after New York. He'd managed to disappear off the face of the Earth for a couple of days, going to his safe house (his own, very own safe house, that he had been hiding from SHIELD) to try and sleep the cold in his heart out. Natasha had visited him after 24 hours to make sure he was still alive, and he suspected that she was the reason SHIELD had picked him up.

 Maybe she had done what she thought was the wisest at the time. Get SHIELD to help him clean up his head, get him out of harm's way – not necessarily outside harm. She knew that Clint would need to get out of his own head. He had to have some outside stimuli for him not to hurt himself.

 It would probably be alright, he'd thought. He probably would get some psychologist or psychiatrist to look at him for some days, maybe a couple of weeks, but he'd be alright. Loki was going to go out of his head on his own, Natasha had hit him hard on the head.

 The thing he didn't expect though, was that he was going to keep stuck in there for way too long. When he was brought in, they told him that they needed his personal belongings. That meant that he had to give up his bow and his quiver, but he didn't make any fuss about it, he was going to be out fast. So he obliged. He handed them his bows – the both of them, like they'd asked – as well as his quiver. He pulled out the knifes that he kept hidden on his body at all times as he stripped down and out of his SHIELD cargo pants and shirt.

 They hadn't thought he would give up so easily, and he could read it on their faces. The medical personnel was too tense every single time he handed them something, like they kept expecting him to produce a knife or a pair of scissors or something similar to take them down with. However, he did as he was told. He knew it was the wisest thing to do. He owed it to Coulson's spirit, getting himself checked out. He owed it to Natasha, show her that he could control himself and that he wouldn't try to run.

 Standing with his face up against the wall, head slightly tilted forward so he could see over his shoulder, hands on his neck and elbows high, to show that like all the other residents, he would try nothing, he watched as they brought in another man. He couldn't see his face. He heard David, another resident, whimper as one of the guards bristled his back with his elbow as he showed the new occupant his way. He also counted the number of footsteps as he tried to figure out how many they were. One, two, three... Four and five? Plus the new guy.

 Turning his head to see to the other side as they had passed him, all Clint could see was a slumped shape, the new patient letting his head hang. He didn't notice anything peculiar, except the fact that he was wearing shackles, keeping his feet almost too close together. Knowing that they had apparently need of five guards to bring him in told Clint something though: this was not your regular SHIELD agent who had been compromised or shocked or needed therapy in the longer run.

 When they'd brought him in, Clint recalled, there had been 3 guards accompanying him. He had made no resistance, a token of his good faith.

 Clint lifted his head slightly off the wall, to try and see a bit more as the newcomer was shown into a cell, but he got yanked forehead first into the wall by a surveillance guard.

 “No peaking, Barton,” the guard stated as he shoved the archer straight up against the wall. Snorting, Clint rolled his eyes and turned his head again, the other way, to watch as the main doors were closed shut.

 “Who's the new guy?” he asked the guard who's showed him against the wall, not expecting an answer.

 “None of your goddamn business,” was the reply he got, and he sighed.

 “Y'know, I've been here for over two years, I feel like I'm allowed to know who the new people are since I'm practically the one who's been here longest,” was Clint's reply, as an announcement gave them the right to move back from the wall and resume their everyday routine like as if nothing happened. Clint went on, “And you know, seriously, since your personnel got exchanged a couple of months ago, I swear it's like I don't know you anymore,” he commented, as he rubbed his forehead, where he'd hit his head.

 “Almost like the entire institution crumbled and you've been trying to keep us in here because orders stopped coming from up high,” he grinned, closing his knowing off behind a smile and eyes that showed humor rather than knowledge.

 It had been true: some months back, Clint had counted the days, half of the staff had disappeared only to be replaced by half with some new people that he had a faint memory of having seen on the Helicarrier or in the Triskelion before. But somehow, everything had shifted after that day. He couldn't help but notice that some of the people who had left the facility had been the one who were more ruthless with him and the other patients.

 “It's still none of your business, so shut the fuck up,” Clint was then told by the guard, and he lifted an apologetic hand to show he was letting it go.

 Turning around, he looked at where they had brought the new guy. The crowd was already gathering, so he decided he would go check him out later, as he didn't want to overcrowd the guy. If anyone was brought in now, it usually only was high profile people he'd known or read about. For some reason, it made him think of the fact that they didn't send everybody down here anymore.

 Walking back to his room (or his cell, he always called it differently, changing every other day), he thought back on his time here. He'd grown out of his frustration of not being able to be set free. It had taken him three months after New York to realize that they wouldn't let him go that easily. He'd felt as if SHIELD had put a muzzle on him, and after half a year, he'd understood that they hadn't' been interesting in getting him better.

 They had found out his trigger points, the small phrases, colors and visual stimuli that would cause him to fall back into an episode where his brain would crumble under the past pressure of having a god in his brain, and under the pretense of making him better and fixing him, they had gotten under his skin. When he'd found out, he'd tried to get out of there. He'd tried to get one of the guards to get a message out to Natasha, or to anyone who would listen. Every time he'd managed to bend someone to get a scribbled message on a piece of toilet paper out, that person hadn't been seen again down here, and he knew that no matter how many times he tried, he would never get the message out.

 So, he had decided to bide his time. He knew that at some point, the world would notice he had gone missing. It had happened, every now and then that the guards and his psychiatrist (who, for some reason, has disappeared those months ago when the purge within personnel had happened) would ask him to come into the blue room. He'd understood after some months that the room meant they would try to get some information out of him about SHIELD, about Natasha, about Fury, even about Thor and New Mexico.

 He'd tried to lie to them, of course, telling them as much bullshit as he could remember. He'd also tried to tell them nonsense stories from the circus, facts and figures that he knew they wouldn't be able to use – like that time the lion Mufasa had accidentally tried to mate with the sea lioness Nuuk – but the psychiatrist would usually smack him on the head and turn on a blue light in the room, that turned every color the same tome of blue the world had been when Loki had spent time in his brain.

 When he reached the room, Clint sat down on the bed. He looked out the door and observed everyone. He could hear conversations buzzing from the people who'd been down to see the new arrival, and as he took the words in, he sighed. It had been exactly 752 days since he'd given up his bow and his life to these people, hoping that it would be a short stay in their facilities. He gazed up at the ceiling, noticing the spot that looked like Elvis hadn't changed, and that the lizard who'd found its way into the room was sitting nearer the lights than when he'd left the room, earlier. At least it was company.

He sometimes wondered what the other members of the Avengers were up to. He had no idea. There was no contact with the outside world from here. He only knew that they had been moved 17 times in the 25 months he'd been there, but always to an exact replica of the initial place, so he sometimes wondering if the trip from the old place to the new one was just a ruse to throw him and some other agents off their location.

 Eventually, time passed, and he saw people move back to their beds or to some of the common rooms. He tidied his own room, as much as he could with the few belongings he had, before he moved out of it and down the hall again. One of his sparring partners nodded at him, but he focused mainly on his target. Satisfy his curiosity about the new guy, see if it was something he should be worrying about.

 However, when he was halfway down the aisle, he heard his name called.

 “Barton!” the familiar voice of the guard who'd shoved him against the wall called, and he turned around to face him.

 “Yeah, Bob?” he asked, cheeky.

 “You're wanted in the blue room.”

 Oh no.

 Sighing, he rubbed his temple, as he double back around and walked up to the staircase which glowed slightly as his weight shifted on the steps up. He knew the way, and his entire body tensed up the closer he got. His body had this reaction every single time, and he had to will his legs and feet to move on, or he would get pushed inside. He wouldn't let them have the satisfaction of pushing him inside, he would walk inside on his own.

 When he looked inside the room, though, there was nobody there. Looking over his shoulder, he watched the guard, frowning, not knowing if this was a joke or not? But the guard showed him with a hand gesture to get inside. When he finally moved inside, Clint saw a neatly folded piece of paper, where his name was written in an old typewriting font.

 He unfolded the paper and sat down, to read calmly. He had no idea who wrote to him, but he understood the message. He turned around when he was done and handed the paper to the guard, who pulled out a lighter and set fire to it.

 “Did you read it?” Clint asked, and the guard shook his head. Exhaling, Clint relaxed. He hadn't realized he was tense until he did so, but he hovered over the meaning of the letter and the identity of its sender. Who? Why?

 He left the guard and moved back down the stairs, as he walked more cautiously towards the room the new guy had been put in. His brain was having trouble understanding why he had been given a warning as to the identity of the new guy. Why would someone up high want to tell him about this guy? This was Natasha's business, not his. Rubbing his temple, as he felt a migraine coming on, he kept walking until he was standing in front of the room.

 He recognized the face from files he'd read as Cap had joined the world of the 21st century. Looking down at the floor, he sat down, his back against the wall so he could face the corridor and not the new arrival.

 “The _Winter Soldier_ down here,” he commented, trying to sound slightly amused, though he wasn't really, “Man, if that's happened, either the entire world I know has crumbled, or you've been hit really hard on the head too,” he smiled, as he made his knuckles crack.


End file.
